ANZAC Day 2024 – A new Red Sea War and Winston selling our independent foreign policy for 3 magic beans from the American Military Industrial Complex! What are we commemorating?
Every ANZAC Day it’s not a case of ‘lest we forget’, it’s a case of ‘lest we remember’.
As the dead groan under their weight at the horror with which we cheerfully threw them into the mincer of war, they scream at us to never make the same mistakes.
We always make the same mistakes.
Right now this new Government have sucked us into the vortex of a new war in the Red Sea as Winston sells our independent foreign policy to the American Military Industrial Complex for 3 Magic Beans!
Last week the NZDF kindly informed us that their mission in Yemen will be kinetic and might kill civilians.
Why are NZ taxpayers paying to bomb the poorest country in the middle east in a tactic that almost every single intelligence network tells us will only empower the Houthie?
Haven’t we grown up as a country and will no longer feed the dogs of war with the lives of our brightest and youngest? When we do go to war it should only ever be for the right reasons and never simply to please an overseas power, aren’t these the lessons we are supposed to have learned when we walk around our War Museums staring at the cringe worthy posters calling on men to fight for ‘King and Country’ as we pass name after name after name after name of the ‘glorious’ dead’?
Isn’t that what we should be solemnly promising the dead at dawn? That they have not died in vain and that we have learned to avoid conflict without flag blinded nationalism that pointlessly slaughters so many?
We have learnt nothing.
The Gunner’s Lament
A Maori gunner lay dying
In a paddyfield north of Saigon,
And he said to his pakeha cobber,
“I reckon I’ve had it, man!
‘And if I could fly like a bird
To my old granny’s whare
A truck and a winch would never drag
Me back to the Army.
‘A coat and a cap and a well-paid job
Looked better than shovelling metal,
And they told me that Te Rauparaha
Would have fought in the Vietnam battle.
‘On my last leave the town swung round
Like a bucket full of eels.
The girls liked the uniform
And I liked the girls.
‘Like a bullock to the abattoirs
In the name of liberty
They flew me with a hangover
Across the Tasman Sea,
‘And what I found in Vietnam
Was mud and blood and fire,
With the Yanks and the Reds taking turns
At murdering the poor.
‘And I saw the reason for it
In a Viet Cong’s blazing eyes –
We fought for the crops of kumara
And they are fighting for the rice.
‘So go tell my sweetheart
To get another boy
Who’ll cuddle her and marry her
And laugh when the bugles blow,
‘And tell my youngest brother
He can have my shotgun
To fire at the ducks on the big lagoon,
But not to aim it at a man,
‘And tell my granny to wear black
And carry a willow leaf,
Because the kid she kept from the cold
Has eaten a dead man’s loaf.
‘And go and tell Keith Holyoake
Sitting in Wellington,
However long he scrubs his hands
He’ll never get them clean.’
James K Baxter
1965
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It’s more than just magic beans- you better believe that Peters and Luxon are being paid directly by their masters for doing this. Just like Peters’s namesake Churchill had his gambling and drinking debts paid by Sir Henry Strakosch in a little quid pro quo for supporting the destruction of the Ottoman Empire and his other services performed.
Well done Strakosch. Apart from warfare, dhimmitude, ethnic cleansing, land theft, persecution of religious minorities, devşirme, castration of Balkan janissaries and Black slaves what do the Ottomans ever do for us?
The Armenian Genocide.
‘Never again’, means never again for anyone.
I will be terribly surprised, and frankly awed, if just one of the invited politicians and other official invited guest speakers at today’s ANZAC commemorations, have the courage to say – “Never again”, means “never again” for anyone.
“….For 106 days I’ve watched in real time as the people of Palestine live horrors that bear a striking similarity to what my own family survived just decades ago. But my grandfather’s story taught me that “never again” means “never again” for anyone.
By Hannah Baker
January 29, 2024 at 1:45 pm CST
https://wwof w.reckon.news/justice/2024/01/perspectives-my-grandpa-survived-the-holoaust-his-legacy-demands-that-i-stand-in-solidarity-with-palestine.html
Kinda getting a bit over the glorification of war and militarism that Anzac day is getting to be, especially when the people we went to war to save have turned round and are carrying out their own extermination program against a minority group. Then we also have one RSA letting ex-Rhodesian armed forces march in one of their parades.
While it’s healthy to remember the gross incompetence at the command and political level that made Gallipoli a meat grinder for our troops, it’s not out of place to recognize the courage, the creativity, and the commitment of our militaries, past and present. We will always need them, and, when they fall short, it is often the failings of their political masters that are to blame.
Korea at least is grateful for our participation, (and have adopted Po Karekare Ana!), and the Turks are remarkably forgiving of our misguided invasion (as generous victors may be). They are not perfect, but our folk in uniform make on the whole, a damned good effort, and we are lucky to have them.
Wars get fought for any number of reasons. Always the burden falls to the rank and file, military and civilians. We pay with our blood and toil. I salute those people.
I heard an Aussie speak at Gallipoli on today’s news about the “Anzac spirit”. Good one, Kiwis as second class citizens in Australia, 501s. Very spirited.
WTF Winston ?you stand there and preach about a dangerous world then you will come home and stir up as much hate as you can in a short time .People like you are behind every conflict at home or abroard.You are so far down the rabbit hole its suprising you can get out of it from time to time to whip up more hate and miss truth
You mean agents of Iran using their base in Yemen to attack world shipping ….